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CRUSADER ART
AND ARCHITECTURE:
A PHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEY
Modern scholarship on the history of the crusades begins in the early nineteenth
century. Between 1807 and 1832 Friedrich Wilken published his Geschichte
der Kreuzzüge in seven volumes, and be tween 1812 and 1822 J. F. Michaud
produced his Histoire des croi sades, also in seven volumes, the latter having
reached by 1838 its fifth edition, "revue, corrigée et augmentée,
d'après le voyage de l'auteur en orient."1 Despite the remarkably
broad scope of these works, especially that of Michaud, who made a point
of visiting the Levant in furtherance of his professional studies, neither
author has much to say about the visual arts in relation to the crusaders.
Wilken discusses at length only the destruction of works of art during the
terrible sack of Constantinople in 1204.2 Michaud deals briefly with scenes
in the famous St. Denis crusader window.3 And neither work contains a single
illustration, except maps.
In fact, through the first sixty years of the nineteenth century il lustrations
of crusader artistic work, mainly architecture, were still found almost exclusively
in publications of travelers to the Near East such as John Carne, A. and
L. de Laborde, David Roberts, and W. H. Bartlett.4 These popular illustrations,
mainly rather romantic draw ings of buildings and scenery, fired the interest
and imagination of western Europeans but were not intended for the scholarly
study of
1. Friedrich Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge naeh morgenländischen
und abendländi schen Berichten (7 vols., Leipzig, 1807-1832); J. F.
Michaud, Histoire des croisades (7 vols., Paris, 1812-1822; 5th ed., 6 vols.,
Paris, 1838).
2. Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, V (1829), appendix II, pp. 12-42.
3. Michaud, Histoire des croisades, I (1838), 110, note 1, and 208, note
1, and 11(1838),
180, note 2.
4. John Carne, Syria, the Holy Land, Asia Minor, &c., Illustrated, in
a series of views drawn from nature. . . (3 vols., London, Paris, and New
York, 1836-18 38); A. and L. do Laborde, Voyage de la Syrie (Paris, 1837);
David Roberts, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Egypt & Nubia (2 vols.,
London, 1842); W. H. Bartlett, Walks about the City and Environs of Jerusalem
(London, 1844).
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